Years ago I subscribed to Ancestry and exhausted all the leads I could find there.

Yes, that sounds a bit impossible considering they have millions of records…but this was years ago.

I was researching in Quebec and New Brunswick and just wasn’t finding what I wanted in their database at the time.  I was having more success with offline sources.

I then got busy with a new job and let my membership go for a time.

I recently re-subscribed through Ancestry’s free trial and WOW!

In the last few days I’ve been finding record after record. My genealogy friends on twitter are probably getting tired of hearing me crow about this!

Some records I had before and some I didn’t.

The New Records mean NEW LEADS!

Country of Origin and Residence

With regards to my gg-grandparents, James Kerr b. 1804 married to Jane Henderson b. 1810 Ireland I’ve found Canadian census records from the 1851 and 1861 census that state their birth was Ireland and places their residence as Sherbrooke County, Canada East (Quebec). This I had before.

Valuable Church Records

It was the Methodist church records of the rest of the family members I didn’t have. What a windfall!

I now have the following records:

• Death and Burial Records Compton Methodist Church – James Kerr d. 1873(my gg-grandfather)

• Marriage of William Kerr and Sarah Maria Ball  1873.  (my g-grandparents)

• Death record of William Kerr 1924. (my g-grandfather)
• Birth, Marriage, death records of two of William and Maria Kerr’s children
• Birth, Marriage and Death records of several of William’s siblings and their children.

• Birth and Baptism of Homer Kerr 1881. Hatley (Church of England), Quebec (my grandfather).

• Census Record  of Homer Kerr and Elizabeth Wilson 1916 in Saskatchewan (my grandparents).  Okay…there was an issue with earlier Quebec census records for Homer Kerr.  He was called “Bomer”   Yes, Bs and Hs are very similar.  It doesn’t matter. Someone took the time to index all of those records and I am grateful.   I found him!

I was accessing the BMD records through the Quebec Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection) 1621-1967. According to their web page there over 14.5 million records now.

If you were like me and let your membership go, consider trying again. You can always cancel after the free trial if you aren’t finding what you want.

I’ve been having FUN, FUN, FUN finding these records. Normally you go for ages just finding a genealogy tidbit here and there.  Genealogy friends can relate to the FUN I’m having

I’m thinking of upgrading from the Canadian collection to the World Deluxe Membership. I’ve linked to some of the census records below.  Give them a try.  Maybe you will have genealogy FUN too

[Note to my KERR first cousins reading this - drop me a line if you wish to have a copy of these records]

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Census links for Canada:

1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia

1861 Census of Canada

1871 Census of Canada

1881 Census of Canada

1901 Census of Canada

1911 Census of Canada

Census links for US:
Search US Federal Census Records
Search the 1930 Census

Other countries I’m researching:
Ireland: 1841/1851 Census Abstracts (Northern Ireland)

Ireland: 1841/1851 Census Abstracts (Republic of Ireland)

1861 Scotland Census

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US free trial and Canadian free trial

• County Antrim -25,000 Church of Ireland birth records

• County Armagh – almost 2,000 records from the 1821 census records

• County Down – 3000 Church of Ireland birth records

• County Leitrim -18,000 birth records, 7,000 marriage records, 54,000 census records

• County Mayo -42,000 baptismal records, 25,000 marriages, 3,500 deaths, 28,000 census records

• County Cork -11,000 births, 4,000 marriages, 21,000 Gravestone inscriptions, 9,000 census

They are working towards making the records of Counties Laois, Offaly and Wexford available on the site in early 2010.

The new website address for the Irish Family History Foundation is www.RootsIreland.ie

We can’t get this family out of Canada and back to a specific place in Ireland.  I’ve researched extensively in Quebec and have the names of the spouses of the children, death certificates, census records, obits, land records etc but no luck yet.  The documentation says….born in “Ireland” but not “Where” in Ireland!

The indexes to the Irish Civil birth, marriage, death registrations have been uploaded on a pilot site at a LDS webpage.

I can use the Irish Civil Registrations to locate pockets of Kerrs and Hendersons.  Alas our James Kerr won’t be in this database.  He was born before the time period of this index and died outside the country….BUT perhaps I can find him in another collection.

For an index of all the collections (many countries) go here.